Our native american history holds many foreboding accounts that remain unwritten which most
people would prefer to forget. The past doesn't change by forgetting; it just is. The horrendous
inhumane treatment inflicted on Native American people by European settlers and the American government
remains unresolved to this day.

How Native American People Had Been Effected by Relocation

For thousands of years, we native american people lived our lives at one with our lands and the

When our first native american ancestors were born, the Great Spirit placed us with our appointed
guardians to exist in the lands of our ancestors who first arrived in the promised land of Turtle
Island. We existed this way for thousands of years, unaffected by the cataclysms that happened in lands
far away on other continents.

When Jesus Christ was crucified and resurrected about 2000 years ago, our native american ancestors were
immune to its effect. Two great oceans kept our people from knowing such earth changing movements were
taking place while they continued to dwell in harmony with nature.

Our tribes lived happy and free until one day in 1492 when the seeds of change were placed in
our soil. When Christopher Columbus sailed to our lands and put his stake in the ground, the
lives of our children and grandchildren were fated to be changed forever more.

Almost immediately, the European settlers began to try to convert our aboriginal ancestors to
their religion. Any who stood against the European's religion stood the chance of being put to
death. It was a truly bizarre turn in events, considering that the stated purpose for the
European's migration to the American continent was "to escape religious persecution in Europe."

The European's came to our land seeking tolerance for their own beliefs, but they did not have
the same tolerance to share with our first nations people.

Forced to Move at Gunpoint

In the aftermath of the American Civil War, the US government forced a large number of native
american tribes to migrate from their indigenous lands.

The public excuse for this move was the fact that a few of the native tribal groups stood with the South
against the US government.

When the South fell to the North at the end of the Civil War, many of our ancestors were forced
at gunpoint to vacate the land that had been our homes for thousands of years. Many of the
native tribal groups were forced to migrate west to new lands set aside for us by the US government.

Within the same generation, many tribal groups were forced to move again to a place called Oklahoma,
which was known at the time by the Americans as the "Great American Desert."

These forced tribal relocations led to the deaths of many of our people on the Trail Of Tears.
Many of our elders and young died during the journeys.

Settling In At Our New Homes

Those tribal groups who were forced to move experienced another significant loss, once they had reached
their new homes.

Tribal culture had always been connected to the land and the animals that lived amongst us. And
now, we had no lands to call our own. Indian Territory in Oklahoma was a barren landscape void
of many of the elements we have come to know and love.

As our grandparents and great-grandparents brought up their children, many began to realize that
our tribal customs, stories and culture did not have the same connection that it once had.

When the tribal elders would tell a story of the black bear, it made perfect sense to the
elders, but for the young, it had become an empty story. There were so few black bears in
Oklahoma that most youngsters had never seen one to know what their parents and tribal elders
were describing.

When elders told of a wolf, it too was seen too infrequently to make much sense to the youngest
of our tribal groups. When our people arrived in our forced 'Indian Territory', wolves were few. By the
time the 1930's rolled around, there was no such animal living in 'Indian Territory'.

The Birth Of Native American Cultural Preservation

When our tribal elders realized that the young could no longer appreciate the message behind our
ancestral stories, it became crystal clear that steps would need to be taken to ensure the
preservation of our culture. The tribal elders were insightful enough to realize that if nothing
were done, our traditional culture would disappear from the face of the Mother Earth, to be lost
forever to future generations.

For thousands of years, our traditions had been passed from generation-to-generation without any
consideration to "what if?" It was just assumed that our world would live forever with our
people there to tend to it. But all of that ended in just one generation.

Suddenly, a crisis faced our people. With the introduction of a new way of living, the
traditions of our ancestors began to fade off into a distant memory. The new world offered so
much distraction that our young began to see our traditions as a waste of their time.

Our people had reached a crossroads. We had to find a way for our culture and traditions to be
carried to future generations, or our identity as a people would cease to exist.

The time had arrived when our tribal elders would need to actively recruit students to learn of
our culture and history. The time had arrived when our tribal elders would need to explore new
ways of carrying our identity into future generations. indigenous

The active and planned preservation of our cultural identity began to take shape.

Record Keeping Was Introduced

Many of the tribal elders thought it wise to adopt the ways of the white man. Our elders began
to find ways to write our history and our language on paper.

Fortunately, we were able to retain a bit of our independence through the tribal government
system allowed to us by the US, Canadian and Mexican governments.

Our tribal governments set up actual systems to help us to retain our history and culture. Many
of our tribal leaders have arranged to set up college scholarship funds for those who were
willing to learn our tribal history and culture.

These are only steps. We still have a long way to go to ensure the preservation of our cultures
through generations not yet seen. The way this world is changing now, it will only become more
difficult moving forward to keep the native spirit alive.

The Native American Internet

We are a growing group of native american individuals who appreciate where we have come from and
have turned to the newest resources in the preservation of our history and culture. The Internet
is a huge storehouse of information that can be shared with a world audience.

We now have the ability to stay in close touch with those of our band who have moved away from
the reservations. We have an unprecedented opportunity to share our past with those who wish to
know it.

We are now a growing number of dedicated native people who are channeling the power of using the
internet to lead other aboriginal people towards the positive direction of helping us preserve
our past. As such, we have put together some very informative resources for those who wish to
study our past.

Recognizing all that is good in our little portion of the Internet, we realized that it could be
helpful to bring all of that information together in one place where it could be protected for
eternity. Individual people live and die, but organizations can live forever.

In our little corner of the Internet, we are building a set of web sites that will permit anyone
who is of First Nations origin to come in and set up a resource that can survive for
generations.

We hope you will come by and visit us. We hope that you will stay long enough to learn of our
culture, history and religions. And we hope that you will like our little corner of the Internet
enough that you will come by and visit us often.

This article about native american culture was created for the purpose of bringing awareness to our native american cultural preservation project. The name of the
web site MyRezSpace.com is a combination of MySpace and "The Rez" which is a TV series about life on the
reservation in Northern Canada. The word rez is now a familiar reference to reservation for most native
americans. After creating the first web site, another was created with a more interactive community native american myspace concept; Hence the creation of
MyRezSpace.org which launched in February of 2007.